BOOK REVIEW – JAMES LAWFORD (EDITOR) – THE CAVALRY. 1976 Roxby Press. Large and glossy in format, and carrying
some exquisite illustrations, this book offers a comprehensive series of essays on the history of the horse in warfare from 6 BC to the 1st World War. Lawford allows experts to write of the periods of history in which they specialize. Brigadier Peter Young, founder of the Sealed Knot Civil War Re-enactment Society, and author of many authoritive books, covers the English Civil war on the period. Curt Johnson is equally at home in his essays on the horse in the later American Civil War. Other battles covered range from Waterloo to the Crimea. There are essays on the golden age of Chivalric jousting, and the uses of horse warfare in India at the height of the British Empire. The artwork is not just a lot of pretty pictures of
horses, but a carefully presented history lesson in how difficult it was to depict the movement and action of horses before the development of photography. The opening essay by Peter Young shows that some early art depicting knights on horseback shows the horse as ridiculously small compared to the giant figure of the knight on its back, who was often exaggerated in stature to denote his strength or self-importance. Realism comes with more modern depictions of the horse in action. Picking the right horse for a wide range of tasks was always a challenge. Large horses, often weighing up to a ton would be used for smashing into enemy blocks of men, while lighter, leaner horses would be picked for speed, to be used for reconnaissance and message bearing work. Many riders had little regard for their steeds. They were simply seen as a means of getting a job done. Lawford shows that many more horses died of exhaustion, in being forced to fight too long or ride too far in a short time, or from malnutrition and neglect rather than from enemy fire. He shows the development through the ages of the saddles, spurs and horseshoes and other accessories for the horse. Frederick The Great was one of the few riders who declined to wear spurs. He compared their use to sticking a fork in your own belly. Training
cavalry horses to cope with gunfire, drums, troop movements, and other distractions was an art form. In some battles, such as those of the early stages of the Civil War, horses were not trained for such, and often rebelled or threw their riders and fled the field. The horse suffered badly in warfare. In The Boar War (1899-1902) Lawford estimates that of 750,000 horses deployed, 500,000 perished. It was also seen that a good horse would often be taken from a soldier to be given to an officer who was dissatisfied with his own steed, and the poor soldier would be left with the less reliable horse instead. It’s a fascinating study, and I shall review individual essays independently through Shvoong. Arthur Chappell